Ten thousand posts, my my, this board has gone far in the little time it's existed.How about we celebrate with a good old topic about Red and Blue?Personally, I want to talk about concept art and beta elements, those kinds of things have a small amount of mystery to them that I just adore.
>>10000My friend...Red and Blue aren't even close to the beginning. Let me tell you about something wonderful. Let me tell you about CAPSULE MONSTERS.
>>10029It was the Pokemon before Pokemon. The first few ideas Tajiri and the rest of GF had.(Most of these pictures are from a Japanese Museum. The exhibit was only there for a few days from what I hear.)
The inside of the booklet is quite lovely. With some of the first images of Pokemon and the games concepts in existance. Doodles from Tajiri and Sugimori themselves when first creating the idea.
>>10031Some of these feel so foreign, and yet so reminiscent. It's obvious what some of this became.Rhydon, of course, was a favorite Pokemon amongst the creators way back when.
I also have some of the really old comic ideas with beta Pokemon in them, hold on.
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>>10036In that particular comic they had the ability to evolve and then evolve backwards.Also, that booklet had way more in it. But alas I am missing the pages, so sorry. From what I hear most of it was just ideas for the game, involving an infamous fight between a Gengar and a Nidorino.I'ld give some sort of history lesson, but I'm pretty tired tonight so I'll just explain the Capsule Monster to Pocket Monster thing. In Japan gachapon is incredibly popular and has been for decades. I know first hand how much fun the things are. Imagine one of those quarter machines at super market's where you put in a quarter, except you usually put in a dollar or more and instead of that fake ring or a candy necklace you get action figures and other fucking awesome stuff. But it's all random, it's like gambling for toys. Tajiri wanted to make a game where you could have monsters that fit in your pocket, that could be found and caught and traded and kept with you as friends ALWAYS. And he saw a very easy marketing strategy. So he went with Capsule monsters. Supposedly, he hit some serious copyright and trademarking issues with the name so he changed it to Capumon. Capumon didn't sound nearly as good to test audiences, so he again changed the name too Pocket Monsters, which eventually (also for copyright reasons) became Pokemon.
>>10037My friend, you have filled me with wonder and awe.Thank you for your knowledge and time, I'm off to search for more of this!
Fun fact: Clefairy was originally supposed to be the mascot for Pokemon, but was considered "too girly," so Pikachu became the mascot.
>>10033>>10034>>10035>>10036I don't think that's concept art for the games, that's the first manga that was based (comparatively loosely) on the games.http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Pocket_Monsters
>>10046If I remember correctly, there was survey and pikachu beat out clefairy.
>>10235plus, there's no such thing as too cute/girly to the japanese
>>10046I thought it was Jigglypuff, not Clefairy.